Google buys its way into in-game advertising

Google picks up an in-game advertising company, but Microsoft and Intel have …

Perhaps looking to adopt Howard Stern's (self-proclaimed) "King of all media" title, Google has entered another business: gaming. Red Herringreports that Google and Adscape Media have formalized a small, $23 million deal that will see the in-game advertiser become the latest chunk of the Google monolith.

The deal has been rumored for some time—we covered it weeks ago—but it still is not complete. Neither company is yet commenting on the reports, and nothing has been publicly announced.

Adscape is a small player in an industry dominated by companies like Massive and IGA, but the big boys have already been bought out or invested in by even bigger boys. Microsoft bought Massive last year for $200 billion, and Intel pumped money into IGA a few months later.

Is Google late to the party? Given its massive size, resources, and experience with advertising, it would certainly be foolish to count the Big G out. Still, this move is unlikely to make it a sudden in-game ads powerhouse. That's because these firms rely on signing deals with development houses to include their particular technology in hot new games, and the most lucrative developers have already signed up with bigger firms. EA, for instance, already has deals in place with both Massive and IGA.

The Adscape management team boasts that it has "100 years of combined gaming experience," but the same could also be said for the Ars staff. Adscape does have some street cred in the industry thanks to people like chairman Bernard Stolar, a former exec at Sony, Atari, and Sega, but whether this will allow Google to take a big bite of the gaming pie remains to be seen.

Shameless plug: Those looking for a quick overview of the current debate about in-game ads might check out the video debate I did last fall for G4TV's Attack of the Show.